Abstract: Based on the long term experiences of the authors’ research and teaching in the field of plant environmental stress as well as the current situations of related researches in China, some relevant basic issues were discussed in this paper. These issues include the definition and quantification of environmental stress, the ‘direct sensing’ of plants to environmental stress, the resistance and sensitivity, tolerance and avoidance, adaptation, acclimation, and hardening of plants, the dosage-effect relationship of the stress, the diagnosis of plant injury and death, and the responses of plant cell membrane permeability and free radical-scavenging system to environmental stress. A better understanding on these issues would help to the researchers, especially young ones, to improve their experimental design and paper writing.

Key words: Larix gmelinii, Net photosynthetic rate, Chlorophyll fluorescence parameter, N,P